Empowering families: SEL and self-regulation at home
Discover practical strategies and insights to foster social-emotional learning and self-regulation within your family. We are dedicated to supporting families in Morton, Illinois, and beyond, in nurturing emotionally intelligent and resilient children.
The tripartite model of family emotion socialization
Research by Morris and colleagues identifies three primary pathways through which families influence children's emotion regulation development: observational learning and modeling, emotion-specific parenting practices, and the overall emotional climate of the family . These socialization practices evolve as children develop into adolescents, but the family remains a critical context for emotional learning throughout development . Understanding these pathways helps educators communicate effectively with families about their role in supporting SEL.
Practicing emotion coaching
Emotion coaching interventions have demonstrated significant improvements in parental emotion awareness and regulation, increases in coaching behaviors, and decreases in emotionally dismissive beliefs and behaviors . When parents learn to validate children's emotional experiences rather than dismiss them, downstream benefits include reductions in both internalizing and externalizing behaviors . Educators can support families by sharing emotion coaching language and strategies during parent conferences and family engagement events.
Co-regulation across development
Co-regulation involves three types of caregiver support: a warm relationship, environmental structure, and skills instruction and coaching . These components look different at different ages as children's capacity for self-regulation grows, but co-regulation remains a critical resource for wellbeing from birth into young adulthood . Caregivers play a key role in cultivating emotion regulation development through coregulation—providing external support or scaffolding as children navigate their emotional experiences . For infants, co-regulation means soothing and responsive care; for school-age children, it involves helping them identify emotions and problem-solve; for adolescents, it shifts toward collaborative discussion and autonomy support.
Strengthening home-school alignment
Harvard's SECURe Families program provides parents with concrete tools and activities designed to help manage stress and frustration and improve relationships, mirroring the strategies children are learning in schools . Practical home strategies include "stop and think" approaches where family members pause before reacting, and using simple everyday moments to build executive function skills . When educators and families work together using consistent SEL vocabulary and aligned approaches, children benefit from reinforced social-emotional skills across home and school settings . This alignment creates coherence in children's learning environments and maximizes the impact of SEL instruction.
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